Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
Digital lighting networks have been developed which include a plurality of lighting fixtures, each of which includes one or more LED light sources, all of which may be connected to a common power line or lines and/or shared data line(s). Some lighting networks may also include other lighting network components, such as lighting sensors.
In most lighting networks, each lighting network component (e.g., lighting fixture) includes a basic power and data interface that relies on a connector system which employs a physical metal-to-metal contact between the network component and the network cable(s) or wire(s). For example, some known lighting fixtures employ an insulation displacement contact (IDC) which allows the lighting fixture to be quickly and easily electrically connected to the cable(s) or wire(s) of a lighting network at virtually any desired location.
However, lighting fixtures which employ electrically conductive physical contacts to receive power and communicate data from the cable(s) or wire(s) of a lighting network, and lighting networks in which such lighting fixtures are deployed, are prone to performance degradation and failure due to wear and damage to the electrically conductive physical contacts. Such wear or damage may occur, for example, when the contacts are exposed to contaminants such as moisture, or operate in suboptimal connection conditions. As a result, these electrical contacts sometimes require careful treatment and/or special design considerations to make them more reliable. Furthermore, in some cases lighting network components are inserted or connected to a lighting network over and over again, for example when they are moved from one light network to another, or when a lighting network is reconfigured, etc. In that case, performance degradation or failure may occur because the electrical contacts themselves also generally have a limitation or specification on the maximum number of times they can be inserted or connected.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide lighting fixtures and other lighting network components which are more reliable when exposed to contaminants such as moisture or operation in suboptimal connection conditions, and which can be inserted or connected over and over again without degradation due to wear on the physical electrically conductive contacts. In particular, there is a need in the art for lighting network components, and a lighting network which can allow the lighting network components to be functionally connected to the lighting network, without the need for any physical electrically conductive contact or connection, between the lighting network components and the power and signal carriers, or lines, of the lighting network.